Dear friends and family,
Greetings to all of you in Jesus' precious name! Jesus lives! Very soon death “will be swallowed up in victory!”
On the first Easter Sunday (April 8), we were at the morning church service with Natalia and Isabel for the first time in awhile because Natalia needs her morning nap right when the service starts. We stayed only for the worship, which was very enriching generally and even more so because Natalia was praising God with her outstretched pointer finger and her chubby swaying arms. Isabel whispered in our ears that one of the songs that the congregation was singing she knew because they sing it at her school; it makes her very happy when she knows the words to a song.
There is an icon painted by Simone Martini entitled “The Angel of the Annunciation” which seeks to depict that moment when God became present to Mary in announcing the upcoming birth of the Christ. There is obvious movement in the angel's robe, suggesting pending, excited proclamation. Theologian Jurgen Moltmann, in his book The Coming of God, references this painting in the introduction, saying that the angel's robe appears to be moving as if “blown into history” by God's breath, by God's loving presence. God HAS come into history, and history now belongs to God in a new way, because WE belong to God in a new way. Our children reflect this excitement and newness at God's presence in a beautiful way.
This summer we plan to be back in the States during the month of July. We have an international staff retreat in Omaha, Nebraska from the 13th -23rd, and then we are going to be in Columbus, Ohio for the remainder of our trip, flying back to Lima on August 5th. We have been blessed by God and by all of you this past year, as we have been able to begin to put aside money monthly for future educational expenses and for retirement. What we struggle with every year are the costs of coming home. This year is no exception: we will incur expenses of at least $5,000 in round-trip airline tickets. As we seek to live on a needs based salary, we have yet to cover the expenses of coming back for visits completely. If God lays it on your heart to help us in an extra way in the next couple months to help us with the cost of airline tickets we would be very blessed.
Our time this summer is going to be focused around family and friends. We are excited that Natalia will be meeting the majority of her family and our friends for the first time! We want to make that priority. Lastly, because of the stresses of taking Isabel out of school in July, we are going to switch to a December-January-February timeframe for our future trips, starting this coming year 2008. Our plan is to leave Peru a few days after Isabel's school is done for summer break (December 8th), staying in the States until mid January. We are looking forward to seeing snow for the first time in 6 years!
Thank you again for your loving support of our family, and of this ministry because of your love for God.
Love,
The langleys